Review: A Little Bird Told Me by Marianne Holmes

Published by Agora Books 13th September 2018 / 272 pages

Opening sentence: “They say I’ll never find her.”

It’s a little tricky for me to write this review. I suffered from a considerable lack of motivation when reading A Little Bird Told Me – but I can’t quite pinpoint if that was due to my mood at the time or the book… It’s fair to say that recently I’ve gravitated towards physical books, so have been prioritising those over their digital cousins. That meant that this Netgalley read was one I only dipped into over a few weeks rather than really got stuck into.

It was easy to read in terms of the writing style, there was a lyrical tone and for a murder mystery, it had an almost cosy feel. The hot summers of the 1970s and 80s (where the dual timeline is set) were clearly evoked and you felt transported into Robyn’s world. So yes, this is the story of Robyn Mace and her brother Kit. After a decade away, they return to the small town they grew up in to finally find out what happened to their mother and for Robyn to face up to the truth of what happened all those years ago. They grew up mainly without their father who is not a good egg – as it is so tantalising worded, “if you were one half evil, wouldn’t you want to know about the other half?”

You might be thinking that sounds like an intriguing plot – and you’d be right, it is! It’s just that the pace was too slow for me to get engrossed. I guess because I wasn’t continually reading but just dipped in a few times a week, it sometimes felt that nothing was moving along in the plot. Robyn was still not finding anything out and although snippets of her past were being revealed, it just felt very drawn-out and the ending left me a a little deflated. BUT, like I said, this may be because I had a disjointed reading experience. If you do read this one, I’d be really intrigued to know your thoughts as I think it’s definitely one I’ll come back to one day to give it a fairer chance!